The Charmer (15 page)

“Of course I do. We have made it at least five feet closer to the ground already.”

He bumped against the facade with each lowered hand hold, skinning her legs against the stone. Swallowing a fear that wanted to suffocate her, she clutched tighter and hitched her legs more snugly.

Adrian paused. “Move your right leg just a bit.”

“It is all I can do to hold on at all.”

“If you do not move your leg, I will be the one to let go. We would like all of my concentration and strength centered in my arms.”

She realized with a jolt what he meant. Under her lower calf a ridge of hardness had emerged. “Really, this is not the time or the place.”

“I am all too aware of that. Now, try and move your leg. Please.”

Burning with humiliation, she tried. She managed something of a rub instead of a move.

“Hell,” he muttered. They just hung there, supported only by his strained arms.

“We are both going to die if you don't get hold of yourself. Think of something else, Burchard.”

“Why don't you distract me by promising to repay the debt you are incurring by having your life saved?”

She ventured a peek to the distant street below. The height made her head swim. “What prize would instill the resolve to hold onto those sheets?”

“You know what I want.”

“It is yours. I will direct my M.P.'s to vote against all reform bills unless directed otherwise by the Tory leadership.”

Hand over hand he continued his descent. Each move jerked them precariously. He wound his legs in the sheets and that seemed to stabilize them a little.

Their slow progress made the crowd restless. Encouragement and advice shot up through the night.

“Halfway, Adrian,” Colin called.

“Good heavens, Adrian, couldn't you have found a simpler . . .”

“Oh, Jacques, look at our poor Sophia. Do not worry, my lady. We will catch you.”

Finally the rusticated stone of the house's first level moved into view. Then a window. Finally came the heavenly sensation of feeling Adrian's weight land on the ground.

Gerald was the first of the closing crowd to reach them. He helped Sophia off Adrian's back. “Awfully dramatic, don't you think, Burchard?”

“Less so than a funeral,” Sophia snapped. “If you had helped me with the animals and not run away—”

A huge hug from Attila separated her from Gerald's seething reaction. “Oh, my lady, we saw the smoke and came, never knowing it was your house. Thank God that Mister Burchard was staying with you tonight.”

The closest onlookers, the Burchard family and Gerald, inhaled a collective breath. Colin and Dorothy exhaled exclamations and congratulations to blunt the absorption of Attila's insinuation.

The
faux pas
pricked Sophia's mind. How had Adrian come to be in the house to save her?

The crowd milled and pressed, sorry that the spectacle was over. Adrian plucked Prinny from her shoulders and handed him to the earl. The monkey embraced his neck and settled into the crook of his arm. The earl, flustering with indignation, was left holding him like a child.

“Don't let Prinny get away or we will spend all night scouring London for him,” Adrian said.

“Prinny? By Jove, that is treasonous.”

Prinny smiled up beatifically. The earl froze. “What the hell is he . . . the damn ape has . . . My coat is ruined!”

Adrian shook off his frock coat and threw it around Sophia's naked shoulders.

“The fire is contained and almost out,” Colin reported. “The damage was significant and the building is still filled with smoke. That was a close call, Duchess. Bravo, Adrian.”

Adrian dusted himself off. Sophia sensed that he would brush off the attention if he could. “You had better take the duchess home with you, Dot.”

“Of course. You will stay with us, my dear, until things can be assessed. Will you escort us, Adrian?”

“Colin, would you do it? I need to see about some things here. I will speak with you tomorrow, Duchess. We have some things to discuss.”

“We certainly do.” Including what Adrian had been up to tonight in her home.

A man from the water line pushed through to Adrian. He handed over a charred scrap of paper. “It was found where the fire started.”

“What is it?” Sophia asked.

“Part of a broadside used to start the flames,” Adrian said quietly. “Robin Hood's calling card.”

chapter
16

A
drian knew how to blend in with the night. After learning what he could from the charred evidence at Everdon House, he disappeared into the shadows of London's streets for several hours.

He poured ale down the throats of talkative men and paid barmaids and whores to tell what they knew. He ventured into a house across the river that served as a lair for smugglers and petty thieves. The denizens accepted him because two of their members had once made his acquaintance when they were acting as privateers in the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, in the hours before dawn he called on the shabby home of a political radical with whom he periodically shared arguments and wine.

None of them could point him toward Captain Brutus. The man was only a name to them. They had never met him, nor heard talk of whom he hired to distribute his broadsides and do the more criminal work such as the fire.

Adrian headed home frustrated. Normally London's netherworld was rife with rumors. Captain Brutus must be very intelligent and careful to remain so obscure. He decided it was just as well that he had not tracked down the man tonight. With Sophia's mortal danger still fresh in his mind, he might have killed him.

He let himself into the building where he lived and went up to the rooms he leased on the second floor. This had been his home since the day fifteen years ago when he had endured his last big row with the earl.

It occurred soon after he left Oxford and a month after his mother died. Summoned like a retainer, he had received the announcement that the earl had procured a position for him with the East India Company. The earl was severing all financial responsibility for him, but had arranged this, ostensibly so he would be provided for.

If he had been a normal son he might have been grateful, but he knew that this was really the earl's way of removing his presence from society. This employment would render him invisible. Banished to the other side of the globe. It had been the final, blatant example of the repudiation that he had suffered in countless ways over the years.

Boiling with resentments only exaggerated by his mother's death, and determined to take no gifts from the man, he had refused.

Anticipating that, the earl had then offered an army commission. As a boy Adrian had dreamed of redeeming the accident of his birth on the battlefield, but he could see no point in being an army officer if there were no wars in which to demonstrate valor and patriotism. He did not doubt that the earl would see that he was assigned to a unit in some distant colony too.

Again he refused. So the earl had fallen back on a third alternative that would at least demand periodic long absences from England. He offered to intercede to procure for Adrian a minor post with the Foreign Secretary's office.

This time he had accepted. It had been a chance for travel and a small role in government. He soon discovered that it also provided opportunities to prove his loyalty to England. His countrymen might find his face vaguely foreign, but much of the world found it very familiar. His natural disguise allowed him to blend into countries in ways he had never been able to at home.

It never bothered him that his risks and successes remained a secret, never to be publicly celebrated like the great battle victories he had dreamed about in his youth. The men who mattered knew all about what occurred on those missions.

Using his salary and the income from the portion left to him by his mother, he had removed himself from Dincaster's homes and all but the most formal relationship with the earl. He had taken these rooms. He had never felt the urge to move to more expansive and fashionable quarters. If he conducted an affair with a lady of society, he did so elsewhere.

And so, when he stepped into the sitting room of the masculine, comfortable chambers, he was surprised to find a duchess waiting for him.

Not the one he wanted to see.

The Dowager Duchess of Everdon barely acknowledged his arrival while she surveyed the items on his shelves.

“How did you get in?” He poured himself a glass of sack. She had already helped herself to one.

“Your manservant did not want me lounging around the entrance.”

No doubt Celine had played the grand lady to the hilt. His manservant could hardly stand against that.

He did not bother to ask why she had come. The way she held herself, and the way that she looked at him, and the way that she made the black gown sway when she strolled, told him the answer to that. The real question was, why now?

“I heard about your daring rescue tonight. Very heroic. I wanted to make sure that you had not been harmed.”

“How considerate.” He wondered who had gone to Celine in the dead of night with the story.

“You do not sound as if you appreciate my concern. Perhaps if I was helpless and lost I could provoke more interest. Maybe if I was too stupid to leave a burning building and thus precipitated a public spectacle . . .”

Gerald must have visited her. He knew about Sophia staying behind for the animals.

“You have decided to visit London during the summer sessions?” he asked.

“I may live here permanently. I do not care for that Cornwall manor that is my dowager property. Sophia made me leave, I'm sure you know. Sent me away from Marleigh.” Something between a girlish pout and a very calculating glare played over her lovely face. “It was insulting for her to do that. Marleigh is large enough for us both.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“She did it to diminish me. To set me down.”

“I doubt that as well.”

“It is mine too! I gave up quite a lot to have it.”

“Yes, I expect that you did. Your youth. Your chance for love. Certainly you gave up whatever softness was once in you. But Alistair is dead and Sophia is duchess. If you have come for advice, I can only offer that it is time to move on.”

“I did not come for advice.”

He already knew that. She strolled around the chamber, examining and fingering the oddities brought back from his travels. She acted very absorbed in the Greek icon and Turkish bronze, and studied the primitive African carving with its distorted features and jutting breasts. Every move, every tilt of the head and pose of the body, was intended to entrance a man.

“Since you did not come for advice, perhaps you should explain why you are here.”

Swishing across the room like it was a stage, she took a chair and he sat in another. “I am told that you have some influence over her.”

“You were told wrong.”

“You have a friendship.”

“A very formal one.”

“Still, you could speak with her. Explain that she could use a friend and companion to help her at Marleigh. I could be a great aid to her.”

“Everyone can use a friend. If you propose to be hers, your actions will speak louder than my words. However, anything less than sincerity will be a waste of your time. The duchess is very sensitive about people using her.”

She did not like the insinuation. She glared with a defensive smirk. It passed quickly. She relaxed into the chair.

“I went to great risk to come here. If anyone finds out, my reputation will be ruined.”

“Since your husband is barely cold, that is probably true. In fact, it would be best if you left.”

She kept her blue eyes locked on him. She was beautiful enough to affect any man, and he was not completely untouched. Ten years ago he had been thoroughly bedazzled. Age begets some wisdom, however, and in him that was especially true about the Celine Laceys of the world. His reaction now was a thin, superficial thing that he could easily contain and ignore.

“I will never forget the time you kissed me. It was a wonderful kiss.”

“If I had known that you were to become engaged to Everdon the next day, it never would have happened.”

“He was a duke, Adrian.
A duke.
And you were . . .” she caught herself and smiled apologetically.

“Yes.” He usually did not resent that anymore, but he did now. Not because of Celine, but because of another duchess and what it implied about the limits of his relationship with her. The flare of annoyance provoked a bluntness that normally he would have suppressed. “Tell me, when did you conclude that you were unable to have children?”

Her face fell. “What an extraordinary thing to ask. I am not—”

“When you began taking lovers I assumed it was the duke, and that you sought another way to provide the son that he could not sire. I suspect it began that way.”

“I did not take lovers.”

“I know about Laclere's brother Dante. And a few others.”
Stidolph?

She did not even blush. “Alistair was old. I knew after two years that he would never get me with child. If there were lovers, I was not the first wife to solve the problem thus.”

“Except that after a few more years, you realized it was not him, but you.”

“You are determined to insult me.”

“There is no insult in it. I know because the pattern was obvious. Dante and the others were fair or brown-haired. Their bastards could have passed muster. When you offered yourself to me it was clear that you knew there was no danger of a child. You would hardly risk presenting Everdon with a son who had my eyes and hair.”

She rose and began her stroll again. “I wish I had known at once. Before you became his M.P. and felt honor-bound to him.”

“If it is any consolation, I would not have been any more agreeable earlier.”

He might have slapped her in the face, so immediate was the reaction of shock. Evidently Celine had never faced the notion that any man would not succumb.

Unfortunately, shock turned into determination. She smiled as if a gauntlet had been thrown. “That is a blatant lie. You wanted me.”

“Once I did. It passed quickly.”

“Such things do not pass.”

“You are a lovely woman and you can incite a physical reaction in any man. It has been many years since I
wanted
you, however.”

Sharp of eye and sensuous of smile, she eased toward him until she stood close to his shoulder. “You think that you
want
her now?”

He did not answer.

“You see what she can do for you, that is all, but she is just prickly enough to resent your expectations that she advance you. I, on the other hand, understand such things perfectly. It is the least that a lover can do.” She reached down and stroked one fingernail gently along his jaw. “I know many powerful men. They owe me. In a year we will not even have to be very discreet anymore.”

He grasped her hand and pulled it away from his face. She twisted her wrist until she held his hand instead. Looking down like an angel, she placed his palm on her breast.

He met her eyes and let her see his indifference. He removed his hand and stood. He walked to the door and opened it.

“As you said, you risk your reputation coming here. You should leave now.”

Unlike Sophia, Celine did not appear at all beautiful when she was angry. The emotion distorted her face into something brittle and ugly and dangerous.

“You dare to dismiss me?”

“I worry for your reputation, as you should. He is no longer alive to blunt the talk. You should be more discreet now that your circumstances have changed.”

She collected her shawl and breezed past. “Do not lecture me, Burchard. My circumstances have changed but my position is unassailable, and I did not become Everdon's duchess by being stupid.”

He closed the door on her beauty and fury and returned to his sack.

What the devil had all of that really been about?

“It is early to be calling, Gerald,” Sophia said as she entered Dincaster's morning room to greet her guest.

“The events of last night render propriety unimportant, to my mind.”

“Gerald, you are the sort of man for whom the approach of an invading army would not render proprieties unimportant. So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this unseemly visit at ten o'clock?”

“We need to speak, frankly and directly. Please sit.”

She perched on a chair. He paced around her, giving her a hard gaze like one would to a naughty child.

“That spectacle last night was beyond the pale.”

“Do you think so? Now that I have had some sleep, I am beginning to see it as quite humorous.” That wasn't true. With the passage of shock had come an insistent fear and a helpless confusion about how to protect herself.

“Climbing down that building, dangling like that, you barely clothed . . . it is all over town. The entire episode is highly embarrassing.”

“I would rather endure an embarrassing rescue than a discreet death. I am grateful that Mister Burchard chose to risk his own neck in order to help me save mine. I daresay that he could have been on the ground in a minute without me on his back.”

“If you had not been so willful about those stupid animals—”

“You would have gotten me out. I do not blame you for running when I refused to obey. It was the sensible course. I have told no one, if that is your real reason for coming. Society will not brand you the coward in contrast to Adrian's hero.”